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Album cover art is often considered to be one of the extinct fields in modern graphics design. In times when digital copies are cheaper and quicker to get, album covers have somehow lost their importance as less and fewer customers buy CDs and LPs in the stores. That’s a pity because album covers can be extremely expressive and convey the message of the album in some creative ways. This post attempts to prove exactly that. [Content Care Oct/19/2016]

Music and art go hand in hand. And the best way to get a potential buyers’ attention is with an eye-catching album cover. We all know you can’t just judge a book by its cover, but it doesn’t hurt to give a CD a spin based on a sexy piece of art.

Below we present 35 excellent examples of beautiful, creative and impressive album covers that will certainly inspire you to head down to the local record shop and start browsing through records and labels. We have tried to address various cover designs and present both CD covers and LP covers from the 60s to 2000s. However, some excellent album covers are missing. Please let us know about them in the comments to the post!

“The album was issued with a blank sleeve and booklet and one of four different sheets of stickers for fans to make their own album art. Beck explained to Wired magazine he wanted no two copies of the CD cover to be the same: “The artwork is going to be customizable. The idea is to provide something that calls for interactivity.” However, because the unique album art concept was seen as a gimmick to bolster retail sales, The Information was deemed ineligible to enter the UK Albums Chart.”

The World’s First Album Cover
Alex Steinwess, a then 23 years old designer, convinced Columbia’s suits to create the first true album cover. Until then, 78s were sold in generic sleeves. Please notice that there is the word “smash” on

Ashley Ringrose is better known as Mr. Truffle and editor of Sleevage, a music design blog. He occasionally plays with Mr. Potatoheads and dresses up in costumes. He is also a founding member of Soap Creative an Australian-based digital agency.

rajaraman

yaara

Godspeed You! Black Emperor – Lift Your Skinny Fists Like Antennas to Heaven (here)
The whole sleeve design, not just its cover – it is made of cardboard instead of plastic and inside there is special art too.

Will

Yeah man, some of these covers are amazing, but classic and beautiful are definitely not the same (although many times they walk hand in hand). I got inspired though, I’ll choose my favourite album art and post them on my blog and start a discussion with my friends.

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35

Lachlan

In fact, to be fair, the cover for Bloc Party isn’t even the artists original work — the album shown above uses a photograph by a popular photographer on DeviantArt. The site where the cover art was lifted for this article even acknowledges the wrong art is shown.

I think Muse’s Absolution album should be listed as well. It has a fantastically designed cover.

Stoo

Not up to the standards of previous articles at all… only SOME of these covers are in any way decent or groundbreaking…. EG: Electric Light Orchestra – Out of the Blue – a gorgeously drawn piece of cover art with oodles or creativity and depth.

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Vitaly Friedman & Sven Lennartz

Benjamin

Good post. Designing Record cover is my favorite thing.
I agree with the comment 55. Reid Miles work is to important in Record cover artwork to not be in this list. But maybe Reid Miles would diserve an entire post of his own. The book about blue note records covers is a must have.
If some one is curious and want to peep my record cover artwork here. peace

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44

Rick

Not a single (Reid Miles) BlueNote album cover made the list?! While most of their covers are fantastic, you should definitely take a look at the Herbie Hancock, Andrew Hill, Art Blakey, Donald Byrd, and Jackie McLean covers from the 60’s. Their covers have inspired so many artists it’s a shame to see them missing from this list.

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45

tomek

I would love to see there cover of Merzbow “Frog: Remixed and Revisited”, Pelican “The Fire In Our Throats Will Beckon The Thaw” or The Mars Volta “Frances the Mute”. But the compilation is great anyway!

Tim

No factory records releases?
Obviously everyone knows Unknown Pleasures- but what about Atmosphere
Transmission or Closer or Still
(All Joy Division)
Or the later New Order Stuff.
And as Jason said- where is the 4AD/ Vaughn Oliver worK? (I’m not sure if that is even the best Pixies cover- let alone the best of 4AD)

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Grant Friedman

Nathan Beck

I’m sorry, this is just a collection of CD’s you probably own or know that have nice covers. It’s a difficult article to create because such a massive portion of album artwork is great – you can’t narrow it down to 35. And it seems like you just thrown some up there just because they’re hand drawn or something. Metropolis? Appetite for Destruction? They’re not particularly special.

But hey, it’s a good idea and there are some good selections.

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Vitaly Friedman & Sven Lennartz

@Nathan Beck (#59): our intention was not to showcase best covers, we just wanted to present some of them which we think are good and spark our reader’s interesting in designing beautiful and unusual CD covers. We are no music experts, but we appreciate the beauty of unusual approaches and creative ideas. This collection definitely does not display best covers out there (read the introduction), but we hope that it contains some examples worth learning from.

nick

Shaun

Tim already mentioned Factory Records album covers but to add to that, most of them were designed by Peter Saville. How you can miss out one of today’s most influential designers in this list is unforgivable.

Everyone has their favourites and will disagree over a list but how can you miss Power, Corruption & Lies by New Order, designed by Saville?

antpaw

Gershon

raj dash

Love this list of album covers. Reminds me somewhat of the full size Book of Album Covers, volume 1, that I have of LP covers lying around somewhere. Not sure if it’s still in print, but it’s Paper Tiger Press, I beileve. And there are a lot of great Yes and Grateful Dead covers in it worth checking out.

Ryan

Dima

I saw someone else commented on it, but Sgt. Pepper’s by The Beatles should be on the list. Their use of cardboard models and the arrangement of those models and other items makes it a one-of-a-kind cover.
The Rolling Stones’ Beggar’s Banquet alternate cover, though slightly disgusting, is a unique approach, as well. (Contributing to the debate about “trash as art”, perhaps.)
Bob Dylan’s Bringing It All Back Home has that unique fading effect.

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Stephen

Hmmm… less than inspiring. Some nice pieces for sure, but this doesn’t feel like a representative collection. This feels more like a designer went through his/her collection and picked pieces that they thought to be ‘inspiring’.

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75

justin

Vitaly Friedman & Sven Lennartz

@Stephen (#96): could you be more specific about what you mean with “representative”? And please provide us with some excellent album covers which could serve as the inspiration for further visitors of this post.

chriswho

I love smashing, but this post is far more subjective (and disputable) than usual…

In the future, a sentence or two about “why” someone thought a piece was inspiring/beautiful/groundbreaking would at least make the opinion seem thoughtful and intentional vs. just picking random covers that look cool.

People don’t have to agree, but when disputed, it makes it apparent that it was “Mr Truffle’s” thoughtful opinion, and helps insulate Smashing’s reputation from differing opinions on design.

Alpen Dyer

Can’t believe you don’t like 10 000 days’ cover. If there is a cover I agree on that list it would be that one. Well… whatever. I also think Hunky Dory, Diamond Dogs or Scary Monsters should be in there.

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Gershon

Doug S.

Could we not have just said the name Storm Thorgerson and been done with it? Some of the best album covers of all time (including three here that I noticed) were created by this man including every Pink Floyd cover.

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85

Gerardo

Mike

sunil

The Motley Crew album is the worst … a trite image. Sargent peppers is an iconic cover that is missing. Although I suspect this collection has more to do with musical taste than album covers. You may as well add Andy Warhol’s cover for the velvet underground’s albums if we are going by that.

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DRM

@ 99: Clearly, you don’t know much about music. That album cover is DEFINITIVE of a sound, a style, and a generation of music listeners. Just looking at that “bad photo” — as you so brazenly put it — gives me chills when I think about what’s on that album.

You should probably do some homework before you open your mouth about things you’ve proven to be uneducated about.

The Soulwax cover, on the other hand, atrocious. Not exactly amazing design there.

steve

Blair Millen

Great selection of album covers, and like most commenters I could think of a few you could add (and subtract).

I did start thinking about how we perceive about album art, especially if the album has been around for years; I wonder, if we see an album cover regularly does this impact our objective appreciation of the artwork? Do we even appreciate the artwork even more when we love appreciate the music? I wonder this because I feel the Guns and Roses “Appetite for Destruction” cover is nothing special (even though I rate this album very highly).

Mr Truffle

1: Soul Wax cover: Take a step back from your computer. Ahh now you see.
2: The list started out as “25 illustrated covers” so that was easier to contain and choose. Now as you can see we’ve opened up a can of worms as what makes a good cover vs what makes a iconic cover vs what makes somethign beautiful are all different things.

There would need to be 50 lists to cover all the different types of covers.

McFly

Andre

Kevin

Maybe not a definitive list, I can think of a lot of other great ones. But overall, some very nice album artwork, including some of my favorites.

There’s only one that I disagree with. Coldplay’s Viva La Vida. Doesn’t do much for me. Just some words scribbled over a famous painting. I think the others are a lot more creative personally. Just my opinion. All the others are great.

Rose

Sitting here looking over all the Beautiful Music Album Covers, makes me stop and think of what might be going throw each person mind when they came up with their idea. Some you can see just do it on a idea that pops up in there head. Others take time to really think hard and long an what they want to say. Why others do a play on ideas of other albums. All are great no matter how each one came up with the idea. Helps the rest of us to get motivated to do better. Thanks

Rose

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106

WEBARMY

Where is The Flaming Lips, Amon Tobin, August Burns Red, Burial, Chevelle, Pinback, and several others that have some great album covers. Others to mention are Peter Bjorn and John and Gnarls Barkley. Fujiya and Miyagi and Deftones [White Horse] both have good examples of minimalist design. And several others that deserve recognition more than some of those.

P78

AkBk

Chris

Sure, you knew this would get a ton of comments as it becomes a musical preference vs. a design preference. Some nice choices, however, I would’ve liked to see some efforts from Hugh Syme. He does Rush album artwork and others.

Tamar Weinberg

Laurence

It’s great to see some australian bands up there. Speaking of which – The Grate’s new album, Teeth Lost, Hearts Won is quite addictive.

Little Birdy’s artwork for Hollywood was created by a employee of the the clothing shop Nobody (I believe there are stores all over the world). From what the employee was mention, Nobody releases a book every where which their employee’s make. The guys from Little birdy loved it and got the guy to do all the artwork for the album. The jacket is more impressive than the album artwork.

And then you can’t go far from Interpol’s Our Live to Admire for a cheeky laugh.

Bim

Danny

*sorry about double post, forgot to close the link. Please delete post 161.

Completely second Luke Greenaway’s suggestion of any of the Lex records catalog, lots of embossing, foiling and attention to detail.
Also the lettering by Alex Trochut on the Rolling stones “Rolled Gold Plus” is sexy.
Did anyone else wonder why the hell a painting commemorating the July Revolution in france is featured on an album called “Viva la Vida”? Maybe it’s some kind of EU intergration directive.

Hugo

Ryan

Hueij

Sgt Pepper’s has been mentioned a couple of times, and so has Sticky Fingers. Too bad they won’t work on a CD cover…

Another one that won’t work on a CD but is IMHO one of the best vynil covers is Bob Marley’s “Light A Fire”.

But to end this discussion of which cover should definitely be or not be in this list, why not post 35 images of “The Beatles” (the White Album) and be done with it? (Well, maybe 34 and finish it of with Spinal Taps’ unpublished “Black Album”)

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Sketchee

Not much hip hop or country or anything else. I listen to a lot of these bands you have listed, including Muse and Radiohead and Keane. These covers seem to represent a certain type of music. I really liked Kelis’ Kaleidoscope cover. Erykah Badu’s Amerikah just some examples

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cipion

The beauty not only concerns the senses. Also involve intelligence (concepts as: time, death, life, etc.., are present), and many seem to expect only the satisfaction of their senses (especially the visual one). For example: the cover of New Order – Power, Corruption & Lies (Peter Saville), is so beauty, I am very foolish to explain so I quote the following snippet:

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139

cipion

“The second New Order album Power Corruption & Lies (1981) simply reproduces a scintillating detail of a Fantin-Latour painting and credits its source : The National Gallery, London. To cue us in on the mode of reproduction employed, the right edge of the cover carries a colour check guide in the form of a printer’s 4-colour registration code. Here Tschichold’s theories of mechanical reproduction (designing for such processes) are collided with Benjamin’s (the delusions involved in such processes) making this a pretty clever cover.”

hjmoore420

On honestly as far as stones covers and art, what about the Sticky fingers original packaging (no pun intended if you know what the original loked like) but the old first pressing album had a working zipper on the pants. That function and form, relates to this article too

Jasix

Hannah von Vino

Yay :D love all of these! Some of my favourite bands in there – Muse especially

I’m surprised My chemical romance’s album ‘3 cheers for sweet revenge’ and the single cover for ‘thank you for the venom’ and even their earlier covers for example, ‘headfirst for halos’. They are all super awesome and drawn by lead singer Gerard way who also makes comics – shame about the new music >_

NeoSheet

i’ve seen another cover which more beatifull than this. but i understand its not easy to collecting beatifull music album cover whole the world, and also dificult to make an objective judgement, i like Dream Theater cover because i’m very nuts with this band event another cover looks great (is not objective isnt it?). Over all, you guys did nice work! keep rocking Smashing ;)

rightjuicyke

Bozo Meko

How uninspiring. Have you, the author taken the time to contact hardcore record collectors, online record sites, I mean records, not trendy modern digital creations. Go take a look at the blue note library, or the website dustygroove.com. Come back with a better researched article, or don’t waste my precious time,

Cal

Great music taste you have :D Dream Theater are my favourite band (V.I.P tickets to see them tomorrw actually :D) Symphony X’s Iconoclast is a mindblower also, however I am GREATLY surprised that Iron Maiden’s ‘Somewhere back in Time’ is not on this list it is if not THE ‘Greatest’ Album Art I’ve ever seen!

Rich

-]Phatp[-

santi

Well not sure what this is about. I see some very average stuff that is boring and uninspiring…
Dunno what coldplay does there? Just a painting (representing the French revolution I believe) with some letters over it… Thats not art IMHO…

Anyways for some more original covers, check out the ones for Peter Gabriel 2 and 3 (they where mentioned earlier but I think those are very good, especially 2).

if this was about illustrated covers then you can add anything from genesis (so tresspass, nursery crime, foxtrot, selling england by the pound, wind and wuthering, duke, we can’t dance are good choices). Of course the already mentioned “In the court of the Crimson King” from King Crimson. Marillion has some good painted covers (Fugazi, Script for a Jesters Tear, Clutching at straws, Misplaced Childhood, Curtain Call etc.) and there are a lot of other bands too I suppose. Weather Report has some, Queen (Night at the OPera or Innuendo), of course the famous Bitches Brew from Miles Davis and Im sure that mastermind Frank Zappa has something for this article too…

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164

Lucas

Eric

Pants

Just in case you weren’t aware, Led Zeppelin’s ‘Mothership’ album cover was also illustrated/designed by Shepard Fairey. You’ll notice his signature ‘propaganda poster’ style not only on that cover but also with the Smashing Pumpkins most recent album ‘Zeitgeist’.

Brooklyn

Okaiz. So. Im thinkin that the new Cute Is What We Aim For “Rotation” cover should be on here because i really like the way they use the objects to make the shape of a butterfly and its really colorful. It also contrasts with the grey-ish background. I really like it.

alain

pixie thumbilina

first off im amazed that they would put the smashing pumpkins zeigiest album cover up , over all the other interesting ones…album art shouldnt be boreing….the zeigiest album sucks anywhoo…looks like greenday gone emo wannabe political statement .the only statement is that the album designer blows!!!!!!!!!!!IM not hating , the smashing pumpkins are awesome but , how humiliating for such a good band.

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189

mroofka_Z

You should put there one of Iron Maidens covers with Eddie – they changed the way metal-covers are designed.
August Burns Red – Thrill Seeker… should be there also.
And definitely Black Light Burns – Cruel Melody (the one with hands).

Also, “Indestructible” by Disturbed is worth mentioning, i think.

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190

Mike

I am an inspiring graphic designer and I’ve always wanted to design music ablum covers (cover art for books, video games, and various covers in general). If this is what I wanted to do primarily, could anyone point me in the right direction?

Dwayne Michael Carter III

sarge

why don’t you spend less time d*ck riding Lil Wayne and start your own site? This way you can put all the Wayne covers that you want and stop trying to tell people what they should have on their own site. What clown! And I like Wayne.

Rudeeeee

Nightmare N!cholas

There are a lot of great works and some of my favorite albums of all time are on this list. I don’t like the song that well, but I love the album cover for Gallows: in the belly of a shark. The song is decent but the album cover is amazing.

Iain

Gary

Only ONE Roger Dean cover? (Yes’s “Relayer”). He could have easily had 5 of his covers in this top 35 list. “Tales From Topographic Oceans” alone should be in the top 5 of this list. Some great Album art here, but some great omissions, too!

-1

225

e11world

Paris

Surprised you didn’t include the album cover for Zepher’s Sunset Ride, –the blue one with the big white plane flying across an orange moon. It’s beautiful. I’ve seen the cover art many times/places, but nobody seems to have heard of the album except me : – )

faida

G. Nollid

It is a great variety, but I think there are some other albums to consider. OneRepublic has some nice expressive covers, with “Dreaming Out Loud” and “Waking Up”. Owl City has truly beautiful album covers, that perfectly convey his message of dreaminess, like “Maybe I’m Dreaming”, “Ocean Eyes”, and his new one, “All Things Bright and Beautiful”. I wish you would take out the comments with expletives.

fritolay

Chris

I’d like to blow a couple of these (and other) covers up onto canvas to hang on the wall. You need a good digital file to blow it up much. Anyone know how to get ahold of hi res digital files of album covers (not the tiny low res ipod ones)? I’m willing to pay for them, but haven’t had much luck. Thanks.

karen yochim

Argee Ramos Geronca

I love Kool & The Gang as much as the rest of the Disco/Soul/Funk world but their album cover for Still Kool (2007) is a straight stock image with the band name and album titled strategically placed over the image. The image is available on shutterstock (ID#21632140). Hair has been changed and the arms thinner but everything else including the color is exactly the same. Granted that stock images are a viable source for legit designers but unless you have a famous artist attached you won’t make this list? I mean anyone else could buy that image and use it but the popularity of Kool and the Gang make it a great cover. Same as no one can use the prism image without it going back to the pink floyd cover.

Sophie

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